| Research guide to European Monetary Union The political background The fiscal and monetary discipline imposed by the Maastricht Treaty on Economic and Monetary Union has ensured that Emu is unpopular across Europe. In the UK, where ironically, the economy is reaping the benefits of earlier fiscal consolidation, this unpopularity has reached depths unsurpassed elsewhere in Europe or even in the UK's recent past. The unpopularity of Emu in the UK relates, in part, to the eurosceptic position Conservative governments adopted in the past. Unlike those elsewhere in Europe, the Thatcher and Major governments of the 1980s and 1990s never sought to champion European integration back home and, arguably, used "Europe" from time to time as a scapegoat for domestic problems such as the mad cow disease fiasco in 1996. However, the luke-warm position of past UK governments was also a reflection of a deep-rooted scepticism held by the British public over further European integration. Opinion polls in early 1997 suggest that around 60% of the UK public disapproved of Emu and as much as 40% questionned whether the UK should remain a member of the EU. For some in the UK, the issue of Europe is less about where Britain's economic interests lie and more about atavistic post-imperial yearnings. |